Help:Language tips
The city for conlangs
This is a guide that may help you creating in your language.
Contents |
[edit] Cases
[edit] Genders
Genders are types of words. When learning a word, the speaker must remember what type. For example, 'a man' in French is un homme, but 'a woman' translates to une femme. This exists/existed in many European languages, including Old English. Below are some examples.
[edit] Two genders
- Masculine/feminine
- Common/neuter
- Animate/inanimate
[edit] Three genders
- Masculine/feminine/neuter
- Animate/inanimate/neuter
[edit] Four genders
- Masculine/feminine/neuter/real
- Masculine/feminine/animate/inanimate
[edit] Tones
Tones can be a mean to differentiate words with same spelling or written form, which can get useful with languages with short and many words.
At current, linguists see the development of tones in two ways:
- Tones can develop because of the reduction of assimilated sounds. For example, ancient Chinese of two thousand years ago was believed to have no tones but consonant clusters. When consonants clusters simplified, tones developed.
- On the other hand, tones can simplified as well. Tones reduced when consonants further simplified and words further diversified from words to phrases.
[edit] Pronunciation
There are two types of pronunciation.
- A word reading 'bade' would be pronunced something like /bæːd/. Examples: English, French
- A word reading 'bade' would be pronunced something like /baː.de/. Examples: Swedish, Italian
